Teacher Talk about Parents and Multilingualism in Sweden (in the colloquium Teacher Talk about Parents and Multilingualism. Attitudes and beliefs across countries)

• In Sweden, approximately 29% of all school pupils are multilingual (SNAE, 2020) and, in some schools,close to 100% of the pupils have mother tongues other than Swedish (Norberg Brorsson & Lainio, 2015).Thus, most primary teachers meet multilingual parents in their daily work. However, in Swedish teachertraining, there are no common measures in place to prepare pre-service teachers for working with linguisticdiversity in the classroom, as this preparation is not an obligatory part of a Swedish teaching degree(Paulsrud & Zilliacus, 2018). To understand primary teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about multilingualparents and multilingualism within this somewhat contradictory context of both diversity and lack ofpreparation, we analysed interviews with primary school teachers in Years 1-3 (ages 7-9). The participatingteachers represented both urban and rural schools as well as teachers with different levels of experience. Inaddition, we included teachers working in highly multilingual schools and those not. Three teachers had amultilingual background themselves. Preliminary results reveal differences across the participants as well astensions concerning the attitudes and beliefs expressed. Although the teachers had attitudes and beliefs aboutmultilingualism and multilingual pupils, some teachers had little to say about the parents themselves.However, some early results show a distinction made by teachers between the parents’ different backgroundsand the reasons for immigrating to Sweden, hinting at linguistic and cultural hierarchies. Teachers also havesomewhat negative attitudes towards parents’ initial proficiency in the Swedish language, combined withsome appreciation of their later acquisition. Concerns are also expressed about how multilingual parents mayunderstand the Swedish school system. Our results suggest that the nearly non-existent presence ofmultilingual pedagogy in Swedish teacher training may give rise to uncertainty in how to meet multilingualparents in the Swedish school.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

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